Brangwen Family Books

Set in the rural midlands of England, The Rainbow revolves around three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than sixty years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow and adopts her daughter as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupt. Suffused with biblical imagery, The Rainbow addresses searching human issues in a setting of precise and vivid detail. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Seen by Lawrence as his most successful book, but subject to the initial prudery and incomprehension that met most of his fiction, Women in Love charts the regenerative and destructive aspects of human passion as Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen—who first appeared in The Rainbow —conduct relationships with Gerald Crich and Rupert Birkin. Set against a backdrop of a world consuming itself in war, the novel creates an instructive vision of humanity's poignant dance with life and death. This text is the famous "first" Women In Love , Lawrence's preferred and unexpurgated version, which was rejected by every publisher who saw it because of the banning of The Rainbow in 1915. More positive in tone than the revised version published later, with different central relationships and a radically different ending, it is now viewed by many as his greatest work.